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Knicks to Ask Less of Kidd After Asking for Whole Lot

After playing five minutes in Sunday’s game against the Atlanta Hawks, Jason Kidd headed to the bench, put on a white Knicks T-shirt and began talking with his teammates. He never made it back on the court. Instead, he went in the opposite direction, to the team’s locker room, where he spent the second half as his teammates battled to a 106-104 victory. Now the question is what direction Kidd’s health is going with half of the regular season remaining.

In the five minutes he played Sunday, Kidd had two assists and helped create two Atlanta turnovers. That was it. At the start of the second half, the Knicks announced Kidd would not return to the game because of soreness in his lower back, an echo of the back spasms that forced him to miss four games in November and December.

Kidd’s abrupt departure Sunday underlined the tightrope the Knicks are walking this season. They have one of the best records in the league, but they also have a sizable, fate-tempting group of older players. Two members of that group, Rasheed Wallace and Marcus Camby, both 38, already have missed large chunks of the season because of foot and leg injuries. Both remain sidelined.

Kidd, who is a year older than Wallace and Camby, has avoided that kind of long absence. But 39 is 39, and in a league where few players are still around at that age and Kidd is actually the third oldest, every twinge he feels bears watching. On Sunday, he did not tumble to the court in pain or take a hard foul. But a night after playing 14 ineffective minutes in a loss to Philadelphia, he couldn’t even get that far against the Hawks.

The Knicks, and more precisely Coach Mike Woodson, knew all along that aging players and a long, grueling season would not complement each other. Still, Woodson, a veteran N.B.A. coach, wanted a veteran team, and he made that point repeatedly before the regular season. General Manager Glen Grunwald gave Woodson his wish. As a result, a Knicks club that recruited Camby, Wallace, Kidd and a 35-year-old Argentine rookie, Pablo Prigioni, is the oldest team in the league.

Kidd is the most important member of that group. Because he can still play effectively, and because he contributes poise and savvy in tight moments of tough games, Woodson has been relying on Kidd all season, playing him an average of 28.5 minutes a game, or just slightly less than the 28.7 minutes he averaged last season for the Dallas Mavericks.

Kidd started this season playing his natural shooting guard position. He made 3-pointers with regularity — he is 74 for 180 on the season, a healthy .411 shooting percentage — and he used his quick hands more than his feet to disrupt the faster, stronger players he was guarding. Then Kidd was forced to be what he used to be, a point guard, when Raymond Felton went out for a month with a fractured finger. Kidd was back in a position in which he long excelled, except it was clear he could no longer penetrate to create for his teammates or slow down the quick, opposing point guards he needed to guard on defense.

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Still, Kidd played on, piling up more minutes than Woodson might have wanted for him. But with Iman Shumpert still sidelined at that point as he finished rehabilitating after knee surgery, Woodson did not have much of a choice.

After Sunday’s game, Woodson acknowledged how much — probably too much — he had already asked from Kidd this season and why now, with both Felton and Shumpert back on the court, he would try to ease up a bit.

“I beat Jason Kidd up, and he is a bigger part of this than you’d ever imagine,” Woodson said. “This is a marathon. One game isn’t going to determine anything. I’m going to need him for the long haul, and I think he knows that.”

Kidd chose not to express how he felt Sunday. He was gone by the time reporters entered the locker room. Tyson Chandler said that he was concerned about Kidd and that he hoped consecutive days off would give his back enough time to heal before Wednesday’s game against the Orlando Magic.

If he plays, it will presumably be for more than five minutes, but maybe nowhere near the 28 he had been averaging. Woodson wanted a veteran team, but he also doesn’t want Kidd to become a constant companion of Camby and Wallace on the sidelines, sitting instead of playing while the Knicks are losing instead of winning.

A version of this article appears in print on January 29, 2013, on Page B11 of the New York edition with the headline: Knicks to Ask Less of Kidd After Asking for Whole Lot. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe